Sunday, September 11, 2016

Ross Douthat wrote that "Hell or High Water" was one of the few movies Hollywood makes in a year that you should see. Good plot, believable characters, dramatic tension what's not to like? Here is the trailer. although I suspect the triler over sells the action:
Meanwhile Armond White give "Sully" a thoughtful and very positive review.
Those of us who remember United Flight 1549's dramatic landing in New York Harbor, will appreciate the tale. Clint Eastwood directs this drama to show America's elites want to eat its heroes not honor them.Another movie critic in San Antonio, Patrick Harris, gives it a rave review.

While a famous (infamous?) carbon dating puts it in the medieval period, there are a great many mysteries that baffle scientific explanation, particularly if it were a medieval forgery:1) Why is the image a photographic negative?2) Since the image consists of light scorch marks on the outer fibers of the cloth, what process created it?3) How did the image come to contain three dimensional information, a technical feat only brought out by the technology used to interpret images sent from probes to outer space in the twentieth century.4) How did the cloth acquire the micro spores from precisely the right centuries and locations that show its originating in first century Palestine, resided in Syria and Turkey as well as modern Europe?The list goes on.No known scientific process could have produced the image. It is more difficult to explain it as a forgery than as being authentic.Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia!

People are already speculating on the possibility of a three way race. One scenario is Senator cruz or Governor Kaisic is nominated by the Republicans and Trump runs as a third party candidate. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is nominated by the Democrats and is indicted before the election. (If Clinton were indicted before the convention, the pols would desert her for Vice President Biden.)

Let us further speculate that none gets a majority of electors in the electoral college. What happens?

The
House of Representatives votes and each state gets one vote. (Article II Section 1.)
There is a possibility of deadlock, but presumably multiple ballots are
possible. The Senate only gets involved in the case of a tie for Vice
President, the president of that chamber.

If I remember right, John
Quincy Adams was the last president so elected, although Andrew
Jackson, the Trump of his day, had more popular and electoral votes
(neither anywhere near a majority.)

Adams was
certainly worthy of the office. I can not make the same judgement about
his successor. Unfortunately, in the next election the populist,
rabble-rouser Jackson won, financed by the crony capitalists of the day
(mostly country bankers.) The "man of the people" had as his running
mate, the well heeled New Yorker Martin Van Buren. The demon of the
Trail of Tears promptly drove the economy into America's first recession
and the the first of the banking crises we have suffered from every ten
years since (in my professional judgement, no coincidence.)

Jackson
was the godfather of the expansionist policies that hoped to extend
slavery to ever newer lands. Professional historians frequently rate him
among our five greatest presidents. Greatest is not best and he hardly
exemplifies the virtue that the Founders believed essential to the
Republic's success. The German word for "great" is "gross."

The moral: do not believe every judgment you read in the history books.